till it is almost dead. It is really alive only in the Past Subjunctive of the verb to be, especially in its 1st person singular. A speaker who employed the Present Subjunctive of to be, and said, quite correctly, 'If I be there, I shall see him,' would be supposed by many people of average education, (unless their education had included the facts of English Grammar,) to be making the same blunder as a labourer makes when he says 'I be here; I be just going home.' Let the reader ask himself whether he would be more likely to say 'I shall play tennis this afternoon, if it be fine,' subjunctive, or if it is fine,' indicative: 'I shall stay in, if it rain,' subjunctive, or if it rains,' indicative. There is a quaint formalism about the employment of the subjunctive which makes us avoid it in every day conversation.

154. (iii) Uses of the Subjunctive Mood. There are cases however in which we still use the subjunctive mood, and there are other cases in which its use would be legitimate, though it has been ousted from its place by the indicative. We still say 'If I were you,' not 'If I was you,' and we ought to say 'If he were you,' though ‘If he was you' is to be heard quite as often. Of these actual or possible uses a book on Grammar must take cognisance.

The Subjunctive Mood may be employed to express

(1) a wish: 'O that I were dead!'' Perish idolatry!' 'God save the Queen!' or an exhortation: 'Go we forth,' 'Tell me he that knows.' This latter use of the subjunctive is almost obsolete, even in poetry. We should now say 'Let us go,' 'Let him tell.'

(2) a purpose: 'Work lest thou lose the prize,' 'Mind that the letter be written.'

(3) uncertainty: 'I'll tell him so, whoever he be.' (4) supposition: 'If I were you, I would go.'

There is thus a scarcity of inflected forms in the Subjunctive, and we manifest a growing reluctance to use those which we still possess. Of

the ten or twelve tenses with which the Subjunctive mood is credited in the Conjugation of an Active Verb, as set out in many works on English Grammar, some are identical in form with the tenses of the Indicative, and others which differ, differ only in the form of the auxiliary. If we are asked whether any particular tense-form, which is identical in appearance in both moods, is subjunctive or indicative in a certain context, the answer will be suggested, if we substitute for the tense-form in question an equivalent expression compounded with the verb to be, as the verb to be marks the difference between subjunctive and indicative by a variation in its inflexions. Thus, suppose we wish to determine the mood of spoke, in 'The master asked who spoke'; if we convert spoke into was speaking we see that the mood is indicative. Again, supposing we are asked the mood of told, in 'I should not believe him even if he told the truth,' if told=was telling, the mood is indicative, if told=were telling, the mood is subjunctive. Similarly, 'I could do it if I liked' resolves itself into 'I were able to do it if I were willing': it would be impossible to replace could by was able, so we may say that could is used with the force of the subjunctive here; but as 'if I liked' might be replaced by either 'were willing' or 'was willing,' we may regard liked either as subjunctive or as indicative.

155. Finite and Infinite forms of the Verb. Thus far we have dealt with those parts of the verb which are called finite. When we say 'I ran,' the action expressed by the verb is limited in various ways. Thus it is limited as regards number; it is one person who ran. It is limited as regards person; it is I, not thou nor he, that ran. It is limited as regards the time when the running took place; the running is not occurring now, nor is it going to occur in the future; it occurred in the past. A verb, with the action which it denotes thus limited or restricted as regards person, number, and time, is said to be a finite verb, because finite means 'limited,' 'bounded,' 'restricted,' (from Latin fines, 'boundaries').

Now the verb can also be used in various forms without these limitations, and it will then express merely the idea of the action (or state) without denoting that the action is done by one agent or by more than one, or by any particular agent at all, or at any particular time'. These forms belong

1 On this point see Question 28 at the end of this chapter.

to what is called the Verb Infinite, that is to say, the verb unlimited, unrestricted, unbounded.

156. The Verb Infinite contains the Infinitive Mood, the Gerund, the Verbal Noun, and the Participles.

(iv) The Infinitive Mood commonly occurs in modern English with to before it, but there are many verbs which are followed by an infinitive without to: the verbs may, can, shall, will, must, let, do; verbs expressing sensation, see, hear, feel, need; and the verbs make and dare are examples. Thus we say 'I may, can, shall, will, must do it,' not 'to do it': 'Let him do it,' not 'to do it': 'You do think so,' not 'to think so': "We saw, heard, and felt it shake,' not 'to shake': 'They made him tell,' not 'to tell' : 'You need not go,' not 'to go': 'I dare say this,' though the to is admissible here, 'I dare to say this.' But after several of these verbs in the passive, to is inserted: 'He was seen to take it and made to return it.'

The Infinitive mood is equivalent to a Noun. It resembles a noun in this respect, that it can be used as the subject or object of a verb:

'To read improves the mind': to read is here subject. 'He likes to read': to read is here object.

The infinitive resembles a noun in this respect also, that it can follow certain prepositions: 'I want nothing except to live quietly,' 'He has no hope but to escape punishment,' 'You care for nothing save to make money.'

157. Simple and Gerundial Infinitive. In an earlier stage of the language, to was not used with the simple infinitive any more than it is now used with infinitives which follow the verbs mentioned above. The infinitive had an inflexion which showed what part of the verb it was, and the preposition to was prefixed to the dative case of this infinitive in order to mark purpose. Thus in 'I came to see him,' where to signifies 'in order to' and expresses purpose, see would have appeared in the dative with to prefixed in Old English, but in ‘I wish to see him,' where to does not signify 'in order to' and no purpose is expressed, see would

have appeared without to, in the objective case of the infinitive. We may still discriminate between these uses of the infinitive, though the inflexion has vanished, and the preposition to has been attached to the simple infinitive. When the infinitive is employed with the meaning that something is purposed to be done, or that it is fit or necessary to be done, and in cases in which the gerund preceded by to, for, or similar prepositions, would express the same meaning, we call it the Gerundial Infinitive. The following examples illustrate its use:

'They came to tell me.' 'He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.' 'He is much to be pitied.' 'These troubles are hard to bear. 'These troubles are hard to be borne.' "This is sad to tell.' 'Here is water to drink.' 'I have a house to let and a horse to sell.'

158. Verbal Forms in -ing. We now come to the forms in -ing, which are a cause of great perplexity to beginners. Beginners are disposed to describe every form in -ing as a present participle. We shall here deal with these forms as we find them existing at the present day and shall give them such names as are in keeping with the functions which they perform in modern English. And this we shall do without touching upon any questions connected with their origin and history1.

Let us take the sentence

(1)

'To heal the sick is a noble work.'

In what other ways can we make this assertion, employing some form in -ing of the verb heal for our subject and leaving the rest of the sentence unchanged?

We can say―

(2) The healing of the sick is a noble work,'-and (3) Healing the sick is a noble work.'

And whether we say to heal, or the healing of, or healing, the meaning is the same as if we said 'The cure of the sick.'

1 For the historical aspect of the subject the student is referred to my Key to Questions, p. 61, Q. 19. Our modern Verbal forms in -ing were originally either Verbal Nouns or Present Participles: they were never Infinitives, Simple or Gerundial.

Now cure is a noun.
of the verb heal are equivalent to nouns.
that to heal is the simple infinitive. In the healing of, healing
is evidently a noun: it takes the article before it, and it is
followed by a noun dependent on it in the possessive case.
Thus only healing in the third sentence remains for con-
sideration. What are we to call it?

So it is clear that these various forms
We have seen

(a) Some say a noun. But is it exactly like an ordinary noun ? No, for it takes an objective case after it instead of being followed by a possessive.

(6) Some say an infinitive. Healing the sick' means just the same as 'to heal the sick': 'to heal' is infinitive, therefore healing is infinitive.

(c) Some say a gerund. The Gerund in Latin grammar is a verbal noun, occurring in certain cases, and possessing this peculiarity that, although a noun, it governs another noun, just as the verb from which it is formed governs a noun. This description seems to agree very well with the character of the word healing when we say 'Healing the sick is a noble work,' for healing is followed by the sick in the objective case.

Now if a person chooses to call healing in this context an Infinitive, or a Noun, or a Gerund, he is at liberty to do so, and it really is a matter of small importance which name he selects; for the Infinitive is a noun, and the Gerund is a noun. But as we already have two forms of the Infinitive with to on our hands, there is an advantage in not pressing the name 'Infinitive' into service to describe the form in -ing. And as we already have another form of the verbal noun, with the before it and of after it, there is an advantage in refraining from calling this form in -ing also a noun; so we may as well agree to call it a Gerund, and we will give its definition thus ;